Steve King Wants to Protect the Border from Cantaloupe-Sized Calves

Are you still self-conscious about your beach body? Rep. Steve King has a workout for you! It's called the drug mule.

King, a Republican from Iowa, is one of the most prominent opponents of immigration in the House, and he always expresses this position with wonderfully colorful language. In a recent interview with the conservative site Newsmax, King said that sure, some kids who would be able to stay in America under the DREAM Act are upstanding citizens brought into the country by their parents — but just not enough to make the law worth it. "Some of them are valedictorians, and their parents brought them in," King said. "For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert." King said his opposition to immigration "doesn't mean that there aren't groups of people in this country that I have sympathy for." But the law would legalize both the valedictorians and the weed-lifters, or as King referred to them later in the interview, those who are "undermining our culture and civilization."

So, yes, that's some pretty clear, unreconstructed ethnic stereotyping right there. But, what is it with the calves? "Hey illegal immigrants, Rep. King is onto you and your marijuana workouts," National Journal's Niraj Chokshi tweets. The calf-thickening bales of weed call to mind a classic episode of MTV's True Life, in which a young man named Luke cries because no matter how much he works out, he can't get his calves to bulk up as much as he wants. He gets calf implants. Poor Luke could have been spared all that agony just by carrying marijuana across the border.

King knows how to express his anti-immigration views in the most attention-getting ways. In June, he tweeted about a protest in his office, saying, "20 brazen self professed illegal aliens have just invaded my D.C. office." He's said that immigration advocates "are salivating over putting their imprimatur on history and changing the character and the culture and the direction of the civilization of America." After the Boston marathon bombing, he said we should "step back and look at all the things and methods of which people come into this country for whatever their motive is." And he's complained he felt like Rumplestiltskin, having gone to sleep after an election decided on the economy and awoken to everyone saying it was decided on immigration. However, he meant Rip van Winkle, as Rumplestiltskin is the monster who tries to steal a girl's first-born child after helping her get a job with the king spinning straw into gold.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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